


We the Damned

by Adina



Category: Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-30
Updated: 2008-01-30
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:28:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1631522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adina/pseuds/Adina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harriet learned to live with sharing Peter's fragile psyche with Bunter long ago; it no longer felt of betrayal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We the Damned

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Tari

_"I say," Templeton exclaimed. "What have we here?"_

_""Sir?" The stocky village constable had followed the London detective assiduously yet uselessly, seeing without observing, observing without understanding. He looked blankly at the small spot to which Templeton pointed._ "

 _""Blood," Templeton said shortly. "There are drops leading off to the_ "

Harriet paused, then lifted the pen up, cursing the little blot it left behind; there were hazards to maintaining her old fountain pen, but those new pens from Argentina just didn't have the right feel. She set the pen down, consulting the little sketch she had made the day before. Templeton was facing the front of the barn, so the house would be to his right. The little wood where he would find the body (corpse in the copse, she thought irreverently) was--

_to the left. Towards those trees, it would appear." He set out at a crouching run_

A footstep sounded outside her open door, an ancient floorboard croaking like an elderly and indignant frog. She laid her pen aside, leaning back in her chair to gaze out the window at the slowly lightening sky. Peter must find her at work, but not too engaged: he never interrupted her when she was writing.

"It's only me, my lady." Bunter slipped into the room without further protest from the floorboards.

Harriet let her idle expression drop, giving leash to her anxiety. "How is he?"

"His lordship is still pacing in the library," Bunter said, her own anxiety reflected on his face. "He appears...very calm."

"Damn." Calm was never good. Raging, weeping, smashing crockery (Peter never smashed crockery), anything was better than that deadly calm. "Damn that woman, and the House of Lords along with her." Except that she shouldn't damn the woman, not when she was all too likely already damned.

Bunter nodded. "We had such high hopes of Silverman," he said. "And it did pass the Commons. Perhaps next year."

Harriet rubbed at her eyes, suddenly tired. "Jerry says he'll actually take his seat in the Lords if Silverman brings it up again. Not that abolishing the death penalty means anything to him, but good ol' Uncle Peter does."

Bunter nodded again. "If you'll pardon me for saying so, my lady, I think you can go to sleep now. His lordship-- I believe his lordship is more likely to come to me for this one. The accused--"

"She's not accused," Harriet said with a surge of spite, angry at the woman she'd never met save on paper and in Peter's descriptions, "she's convicted." Suddenly ashamed of herself, she gave Bunter a contrite look. He waved off her apology.

"Miss Clarke is female, however, and his lordship--" Bunter trailed off, unwilling to repeat what they both knew.

Now it was Harriet's time to nod. "It's been twenty-six years." Twenty-six years: she'd known Peter nearly half her life, was long since reconciled to owing the latter half to his intercession. "Do you suppose he thinks it bothers me, or does it still bother him?" Peter frequently laid his troubles in her lap, but never when the condemned was a woman. She'd learned to live with sharing Peter's fragile psyche with Bunter long ago: it no longer felt of betrayal.

"I couldn't say, my lady," Bunter said diplomatically. Bunter was always diplomatic, always tactful. She didn't know how they would ever manage without him, not that he gave any indication of leaving in this lifetime. 

"It doesn't bother me, not for my own sake," she mused. "The woman--I've seen the evidence, just as Peter has. I don't think--"

"She hasn't admitted it," Bunter interjected quietly.

"No." Poor Peter. He always wondered when they wouldn't admit it, even at the end. "I wish to God she had." She shook her head. "I'm not sure life in prison would be any much better than hanging, not if I were the prisoner." Holloway was bad enough; Holloway or its sister prisons for the rest of her life didn't bear thinking of. "But when there's a mistake--when there _could_ be a mistake--"

"Miss Climpson once vouchsafed to me that she voted to acquit because she could not bear the thought of discovering too late that your ladyship was innocent," Bunter said with greater candor than she would have expected at any other time. Sometimes she thought her friendship with Bunter was born on these horrible nights waiting for Peter to crack.

She gave a bark of laughter. "Oh, I can just hear her: I couldn't _bear_ the thought of learning, _Too Late_ , that those dreadful _men_ had made a _mistake_! How could I _live_ with myself?! My dear father--"

Bunter wouldn't laugh, of course, but his mouth did twitch at the corners. "Very like, my lady. Only I fancy with more exclamation marks." He glanced out the window, where the sun was now definitely peeking above the horizon. "Will you sleep, my lady? Or shall I bring you a cup of tea?"

"There's little point in sleeping now." It was already after six: two more hours, less, and the deed would be past mending. Bunter would take tea to Peter, that simple kindness often enough to crack the façade that his damnable pride built around his fears. "No, no tea for me." She dredged up a smile. "Thank you."

"Yes, my lady." He slipped out, the floorboard in front of her door once more protesting his passage.

She looked at the rising sun, trying not to imagine seeing it through bars, seeing it as hers or any other's last. Trying not to imagine Peter down in the library. Bunter would take him tea, and hold him as he wept. Bunter would put him to bed after the church bells sounded their eight dreadful tolls, and tomorrow evening Peter would be hers again. 

Sighing, she picked up her pen.

_at a crouching run, keen eyes trained on the ground to distinguish the smallest drop of blood, the tiniest of broken twigs. Fifty feet short of the woods, the drops stopped, the ground scuffed and torn as if from a stuggle--_


End file.
